fallacy of the local body
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Victoire/JamesII. With hints of Teddy/Lilly and Victoire/Teddy. "It isn't fair the depth of my looking, the threat of my looking."


**Fandom:** Harry Potter (Next Generation)  
 **Pairing:** James S. Potter/Victoire Weasley with hints of Teddy/Victoire as well as Lilly Luna/Teddy.  
 **Rated T**  
 **Warning:** Cousincest, miscarriage and mentions of sex as well as crude language. **Could be triggering for some.**  
 **Author's Note:** Wrote something for this popular fandom after a long, long time. For some reason, I am strangely obsessed with Victoire as a character and it obviously reflects here.  
 **Standard Disclaimer applicable.**

* * *

 **fallacy of the local body**

 _"It isn't fair the depth of my looking,_  
 _the threat of my looking."_

.

.

.

"You look stupid."

She sticks out her tongue at him while he watches her fuss with her hair as if there is some scope left in all probability. Teddy is out too, waiting, somewhere. The day is like many he has allowed to lapse before, with his resentment colouring the edges and the smile not nearly making it to her eyes. It's so old, so ancient that it can't afford to be anything else.

 _But then_ , she twirls around in her dress and his vision is flooded with the blankness of her dress, the ruffle of her veil, the delicateness in her movements and he never wishes it to be as nascent, as new ever again, with shards lining his mouth and the bearing of a ring too heavy for her hand.

This is how he falls, four hundred and fifty-eight time and counting.

—

The space in between the days he sees her last and the days he sees her next are filled with vitriol and lack of reason. He drinks too much and sleeps too little.

For the first time in years, he attempts to put his nib to the paper.

The ink that masquerades between the lines bleeds the words out of him. It would have been telling had it not been tragic.

—

He stumbles upon Teddy with his sister and the only word that he manages to piece together resembles something like an "oh" and not _what a mess_ or _poor Victoire_.

"James," Teddy looks guilty for his part.

Perhaps for doing it, perhaps for being caught doing it, he is not entirely sure. "James, Vic-" He stops short, his voice catching the edge of remembrance as if he can't drag her name in such a… sordid frame of time. The notion is so utterly absurd that he ought to be socking Teddy in a misguided attempt to defend his sister's honour. Or something. It's practically in the handbook of how to be a Good Brother 101.

"Don't tell _her_."

It's his sister who completes the sentence for him, clutching the sheets to her chest with more strain than any eighteen year old should know and he realizes that this is perhaps only thing the three of them will ever have in common: _part shame and part agreement._

—

He calls her once, drunk at an ungodly hour, on a weekday when she is not even supposed to be at home but for some indiscernible reason happens to be.

"Hello?"He's not heard her voice since the wedding, but even the slightest glimpse of the day trapped in his memory splinters something sharp in his chest. "Hell-?," he feels himself slump against the inevitability of recognizance. "Is it _you_?"

He lets the receiver fall out of his grasp. Thinks he has never been anything but that for her. _You._

It's oddly flattering.

—

Louis, when he finds him, doesn't judge him for all the things he wants to ask and all the things he doesn't.

"Doesn't it dictate for you to hate me in The Good Brother Bible or _something_?" He wonders aloud because what does he have to lose.

Louis takes a swig of the firewhisky he'd scared up. Leaning in conspiratorially, he says, "I never really believed in that."

"I failed Lilly as a brother."

It's the fire whisky talking against the throbbing of his head. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Louis slumps in the sofa, looking away only to look back, in a way that makes him know he's holding ugly words captive in his mouth. "Don't fail my sister too."

He laughs even though there is nothing remotely funny.

—

They have always had an end before they have had a beginning, lost in the place between where his shoulder sinks under a name he didn't ask for and a name she didn't care for yet considered just the same.

So, there in the end, she is at his door, soaked to the bone. Her cheeks damp with tears that she passes off as rain.

"You knew all along." The sadness resonant in her voice is as nowhere as sad he feels and he thinks she should know better than to show up here. He might not have it in him to let her go again. " _I can't_ -."

He catches her when her feet give away only to stumble back in surprise when her palm comes up to land against his cheek. "You have made a fool out of me," she whispers, eyes bright with shock at her own loosely strung ties. He almost lets her turn away then, almost lets the ending set in, almost lets her go before-

He reaches out and drags her back despite her vehement protests. Her hair tangles in his lapel button as she twists in the coil of his arms, daring him with his eyes. He's always hated how she stood out in a family of redheads with her glaringly silver hair and forever frozen eyes.

"You have made a liar out of me," he tells her and the curses that fall off her lips ring soundless in his mouth.

—

The man with blue hair bends his knee, somewhere in the middle of space he has managed to carve for himself, even as he spills accusations from his eyes and apologies from his mouth.

"Please, Vicky," the name is vulgar on his tongue, an ugly weapon of war. He would rob him of it if he could. " _Please._ "

She looks away from him only to look up at him. "I-," she begins and they end. Just like all the times before, just like all the times after. "James." The ring on her finger nearly blinds him from the angle at which the light strikes it. She has never looked more beautiful as she does with her red-rimmed eyes and knotted hair in this catch of time. "I'm sorry."

 _But not because I love you._ She doesn't say so he pretends that he didn't hear it in the first place.

—

It's the sound of Lilly crying on the other end that greets him in the dead of the night, sharp and blubbering and yet he hears the words cut through the static without the slightest of efforts.

"I swear I didn't know-"

"It will kill her. I can't, what was I thinking-"

"Teddy,"

"There was so much blood on the floor-"

"She lost the child-"

"James. James?"

The short lapses in her malformed sentences are openings for escapes, tender mercies, but he is snared in the terrible habit of punctuating more instead of breathing less. "Where is she?"

—

He remembers the middle, though.

The curve of her spine on his sheets. The sudden laughter in his ear. The sleight of her hand on his cheek.

She'd stared at him, her eyes hazy with lust, and raked her nails down his spine. "Fuck me." The word came out jumbled on her lips, strange and artificial instead of plain crude. She had flushed, the colour blooming on her cheeks to race down her body as if she had had to force it out.

He didn't then.

Didn't leave behind a mark on her body because he didn't need to, he was already coursing through her veins. Didn't go roughly because he could never imagine wanting to, never with her. Didn't fuck her because he loved her enough not to.

"I hate you," he whispered even as he made love to her.

They were something shy of a tragedy interspersed in contradictions.

"That's a pity," his thoughts fell to pieces against the feel of her smile against his skin, "because I love you."

 _The middle, it was._

—

She seemed lost in her own head when he stumbles upon her, doesn't even notice him noticing her, the fresh hollowness in her cheeks, the ring missing from her hand. She never took it off. Wrung it around, fiddled with it, but never took it off as part of some distorted symbol he didn't like to dwell on.

"Victoire." She doesn't look up until he's there, pulling her to her feet with a snap of his hand.

 _Weightless_ , she sees him with unseeing eyes. " _You_ ," she breathes, "you are here. Why?"

The dress she wore hung loosely on her frame, fluttering against the fabric of his jeans.

"Was it?" He _ends_. Doesn't _begin_ a stream of thought that runs into insanity.

Her head comes to rest on his chest, her clavicle digging into the beat of his heart.

"No."

He's surprised to note that it bothers him more than it grants him relief.

"I am here to take you away."

"Don't say that." She lets her hand fall to her side, pulls herself away to meet his eyes. "He is reeling too-"

The anger that rushes in falters in comparison to the anguish ripping away at her. Hot, stark warmth bursts behind his eyes.

"He is not your weight to carry," his fingers reach out to touch the ruined skin on her finger from where a ring sat. "Don't be so stubborn, he will rip away at you and you will let him."

 _"He will hear you."_ The sadness shaping the blue of her eyes grips him as a vice and he suddenly feels sorry for himself, for all the times he let her go.

"I-"

He swallows her words when he kisses her, pressing her into the wall of hallway, away from the family they share, under the roof of her husband who has provided her with nothing but an endless _ring_ of crushed dreams. "Come with me."

She turns away, phantom sadness ghosting around her crevices.

 _"James."_ He waits till she finally forces her face up again, his eyes darting around to map out hopes too fragile to voice and guilt emerging as fault lines.

The incantation he utters is soundless.

—

He takes her away despite her answer being short of words. She can't bring herself to mind it too much.

.

.

.

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 **End Notes:** So, the ending was a bit rushed but it was so draining to write this that I wanted to get it over with. Anyways, every and each review will be treasured, spare your words if you find the time.


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